Hey Everybody. For some reason yesterday I started listing off things I found interesting and/or useful because I realized that I'm probably learning about tons of new things everyday and I forget about them.

So then I thought, what do I do with this list? I should keep a journal!

So then I thought, where do I find a digital journal because I don't know where my pen is, much less remember how to write the old fashioned way. Plus, then I can add to the journal where ever I am.

So then I thought, screw it, I'll just make blog posts on my website. So here we are. I don't know if I'll keep doing this but this is a journal entry about all the disparate stuff I read about yesterday that I don't want to forget about (at least all the stuff I remembered to log).

STUFF I READ ABOUT YESTERDAY

1) Digital Bath

No, 80s children, I'm not referring to the Deftones song. This was an idea I came across on a Medium article I can't find now because I neglected to save the link. But it's a simple idea that I want to make sure to try. Pick one day a week and turn off the internet. Turn off your phone, your internet on your computer, your netflix, all of it. Chyna and I are always talking about quitting the internet for a while to see what happens. Picking one day seems not too intrusive but also useful.

2) Cinemagram

Burnie Burns of RoostTeeth said he missed the art form of Cinemagram and wondered why it didn't catch on and posted this on twitter:

I too miss this art form for a single moving thing in a gif and didn't know that it was called Cinemagram. I'd like to figure out how to make good ones and maybe use them to promote videos or just for funsies.

3) Matt Hamlin

Learned about this guy and his YouTube channel UpIsNotJump from a post on Patreon's blog. He does videos about gaming but it's not just playing a game and commenting. It's more like a highly intricate, hilarious video essay about a game while using footage of him playing to compliment what he's saying. It's fast paced, smart, & hilarious. He's now someone I'm taking inspiration from.

4) Imgur posting

This is also a takeaway from that Matt Hamlin Patreon article about some of the strategies he used to promote his videos. One of them I never really thought of is posting gifs to Imgur and then posting that to Reddit as a sort of "trailer" for his videos. This is something I want to try. I'll post them to the Beardlovers Subreddit.

5) 7 Basic Plots

Another Patreon post about Michelle Czajkowski led me to this. Michelle is a comic artist who used to work for Dreamworks but broke out on her own to create her webcomic Ava's Demon. In the Patreon article she talks about the importance of research before creating what you want. And one of the things she researched to tell her story is Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots.

I'm always interested in learning the guidelines people use to write their stories and the patterns we can find in most well told stories. This is fascinating by itself but I also would like to write good stories myself so I try to internalize all these ideas. These 7 basic plots are good things to keep in mind when plotting out a story.

CONCLUSION

Wow, this feels like something I should have been doing for a long time. I actually couldn't remember Michelle Czajkowski or where her article was. I had to do quite a bit of digging. And this is just something I read yesterday. Damn. I just read too much crap to remember it all. Journaling the important bits seems necessary. Hopefully I can convince myself to keep doing it.